ARMS: Removing

Last week, we talked about the importance of adding to our WIPs while we revise. Now we’re going to go over the opposite: removing.

This is the hard part, emotionally speaking. A popular bit of writing advice is to “kill all your darlings” in revision, but it’s often resented.

One reason is that it can be so easily misunderstood. A “darling” in this sense is not something that actually adds value to your story. It’s something the author likes but ultimately is self-indulgent or just doesn’t work well in the WIP. Still, even when you see that a darling is causing problems and not justifying its presence in the writing, it can be hard to just remove it. But think of it this way: you don’t have to wipe your darling from the face of the planet. You can pursue other options.

Imagine your company is downsizing, and you’re in charge of figuring out who needs to go. It’s not an enviable position, but let’s say you’re calling in George Clooney to deliver the bad news (after all, when you kill your darlings, you’re not hurting their feelings, and they won’t yell at you or cry when you get rid of them, so it's a little easier to look at prospective cuts logically). When you look through the employees’ files, you find a couple problem areas. First, there are the people who never should have been hired in the first place: the slacker nephew of the CEO, the underqualified person in accounting who knew one of the higher-ups, and so on. You know you can show them the door. They were somebody’s favorites, but they aren’t helping the company overall.

Now let’s look at the second problem area: people who do something very well, but the mission of the company has changed, and now their area of expertise isn’t needed as much—or at all. They’re very skilled, they’re wonderful people, and you hate having to lay them off, but you have a job to do, and with all they have to offer, they can find a position at a company that’s a better fit for what they do.

Now, if you're George Clooney's Up in the Air character in real life, you’re probably thinking, “Come on, it’s never that tidy. People get laid off even though they’re working hard and the company might prefer to keep them if it could afford to. And what kind of company has so many unnecessary employees hanging around?” But in this analogy, you don’t have a budget to worry about. You don’t have to pay your sentences, you don’t have to offer full benefits to your subplots, and your characters don’t ask for dental. But you do have a lot of “employees” who need to be cut—not just the slacker chapters but also the loyal subplot that’s been around since the beginning of the first draft but doesn’t quite fit now that your book has changed direction.

There will be some darlings you really don’t want to kill because, like the good employee who just doesn’t fit with the company anymore, they’re actually good, just not in the current context. I keep a file of these darlings so I can remember them for other possible projects that would suit them better. That way, I never have to worry that I’ve killed an awesome idea; I know it’s still there if I want to use it.

So when you’re revising, don’t let the fear of losing a good idea stop you from making necessary cuts. Keep everything you think you might miss in a “good ideas for later” file. When you revisit it, you may find that some of those ideas aren’t as good as you thought, and you can get rid of them then. But you’ll also find plenty of good ones that can serve as inspiration for your next project.